Cat may be becoming jealous of my baby??

[wacckky]

hello! So the cat in question here is in my previous posts about dealing with her cystitis due to stress as the vet believes. She can fight with our 2 other cats, but for the most part they're ok.

Another contributor to stress may be the fact i had a baby almost 7 months ago. He's a good baby doesnt fuss too much but he's had his nights where he would scream and cry due to teething. Before she never really cared about me, or him. Her problems with cystitis is recent like past 2 months now maybe??

But within the past month or so shes became extremely attached to me. I'd wake up during the night and she would be sleeping on top of me anywhere which she never used to do. When my sons taking a nap in my bed she gets extremely close to him and I'm constantly pushing her away from him, idk if she's starting to like him too a lot or just wants to be the center of attention. Other than that she's not doing things like peeing on his stuff or whatever just became increasingly needy.

If my baby is a contributor to her stress how can I deal with this? I thought at first it was an internal conflict with the other cats but now idk.. i do give her attention alone and now she's so sucky i give her even more attention. She's never cared about me like this before. She's on amitriptlyine and we have feliway diffusers going on around the apartment for her stress. Not sure what else I can do

 

[ArtNJ]

Have you been home for Covid-19 or the baby? You being around more seems a more likely explanation for the newfound clingyness. If she wants to lay next to the baby, that doesn't sound like stress to me - seems more like she knows that you are where the baby is, like putting the baby down is a clue to where you will be for a while.

 

[wacckky]

Have you been home for Covid-19 or the baby? You being around more seems a more likely explanation for the newfound clingyness. If she wants to lay next to the baby, that doesn't sound like stress to me - seems more like she knows that you are where the baby is, like putting the baby down is a clue to where you will be for a while.

Okay! I just want to help her in any way I can, and yeah i am home 24/7 basically. These are all my bfs cats and they've been around him longer than me but I'm home all the time and he works. She still has her problems with cystitis and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it, hopefully next appointment its improved by then. Cats still go after each other but hopefully when we move and have bigger space they'll get a long better.

 

[ArtNJ]

I think that is probably it then. My cats got a lot more clingy when I retired. Even with the baby, you have more time for the cat on average than BF does.

As far as the fighting goes, ongoing fighting is certainly a potentially serious problem. I've had one of my cats bite another twice. A lot of cats aren't terribly serious about fighting each other though, so it depends how they are going about it. So I have no idea if you can safely let it be. You can tell us more about the fighting if you like, and we might have some ideas as to causes and solutions. You could always try reintroducing the cats. I can't rule out the baby stressing one of the other cats, it just doesn't sound like the cystitis cat is stressed by the baby if he wants to lay down next to him.

 

[wacckky]

I think that is probably it then. My cats got a lot more clingy when I retired. Even with the baby, you have more time for the cat on average than BF does.

As far as the fighting goes, ongoing fighting is certainly a potentially serious problem. I've had one of my cats bite another twice. A lot of cats aren't terribly serious about fighting each other though, so it depends how they are going about it. So I have no idea if you can safely let it be. You can tell us more about the fighting if you like, and we might have some ideas as to causes and solutions. You could always try reintroducing the cats. I can't rule out the baby stressing one of the other cats, it just doesn't sound like the cystitis cat is stressed by the baby if he wants to lay down next to him.

They were fine until recently maybe a month or so now I was in the kitchen making myself some food then all of the sudden they were chasing each other around the apartment and it was a huge fight. I acted fast as I did not want to go through a similar situation we did last year (long story short one of our other cats who's no longer with us became extremely vicious towards the others). I separated them all and then slowly reintroduced them.

Our apartment isn't very big and having 3 cats its hard to live like that. One will be in the bathroom, one will be in our room and 1 to roam. While separated we will rotate the cats so they can smell the other scents and explore the area. The reintroduction process is pretty quick as they seem to recognize each others scents again quickly.

We haven't bad a big fight like that since, but the one with cystitis likes to start being aggressive to the others sometimes. I chalk this up due to her ongoing health issues that make her more defensive. When she starts acting up i do separate her from the others until she's okay. She mostly seems to do it around when she's due for her medication again. I'm trying very hard to work on this conflict and spent lots of money to help her and the others. But we will be moving into a much bigger place in August and they'll have their own spaces and hopefully that will help, and will buy them a decent cat tree and other things they can perch up on

 

[ArtNJ]

Yeah, it could be that. It is known that not feeling well can make cats more irritable with other cats.